The Second Maiden’s Tragedy ed. by Anne Lancashire (review)

366 Comparative Drama sense in terms of explaining motivation in The Master Builder and Hedda Gabler. Schwarz is equally impressive in his analysis of Arthur Miller. His sympathetic study of After the Fall bears looking into, for this is one of the few critics who accepts the work on its own terms and is no longer searching for these to be something else. Schwarz’s thematic approach (“Man as Agent and Victim,” “Tragic Theaters of the Will,” and “The Devaluation of Life”) raises significant questions of methodology when applied to European drama since World War II. His categorizations of “tragic modes” skillfully encompass much of the vitality of existential playwrights like Camus and Sartre, yet seem woefully inadequate in delineating the dramatic energy of Beckett or the sheer theatricality of Tom Stoppard. From Büchner to Beckett may miss the rich realm of theatrical style, but when it addresses itself to a careful consideration of hero and idea, its impact is always directly on target. ENOCH BRATER University of Michigan The Second Maiden’s Tragedy. Ed. Anne Lancashire. The Revels Plays. Manchester and Baltimore: Manchester Univ. Press and Johns Hop­ kins Univ. Press, 1978. Pp. xx + 317. $16.00. Anne Lancashire’s Revels edition of The Second Maiden’s Tragedy is a first-rate job of editing a third-rate anonymous play that has survived only in a manuscript of first-rate interest to students of the early theater and dramatic texts. It is not surprising to find another first-rate job of editing in the Revels Plays, but it is surprising to find this particular play there, since previous volumes have usually contained the best and best-known dramas of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Gen­ eral Editor, F. David Hoeniger, explains that the series will include not only “well-known plays but also . . . some of the lesser known of whose merit as literature and as drama [the editors] are convinced” (p. ix). Many readers will probably not agree that this play has sufficient merit. The MS, which has been in the British Museum since 1807 and was first edited in 1824, is a prompt book arranged for production by the King’s Men. On the last page of text is the license signed by the Master of the Revels, Sir George Buc, approving the play for public perform­ ance; the license is dated 31 October 1611 and calls the play (otherwise untitled) “This Second Maydens tragedy.” Buc’s hand appears at least twice in the text, toning down comments about great men and about regicide. There are additions on separate slips of paper by the original scribe and many cuts and alterations in the speeches by two or more other persons. The book-keeper and prompter of the King’s Men is doubtless responsible for sixteen added stage directions. For anyone in­ terested in the vicissitudes of a Jacobean play text on its way to perform­ ance, there is much detail here, and the editor provides an informative discussion of censorship of seven kinds (pp. 275-80), as well as lists of other corrections. Evidently written in 1610-11, The Second Maiden’s Tragedy has Reviews 367 been attributed to Thomas Goffe, George Chapman, William Shake­ speare, Philip Massinger, John Webster, Cyril Tourneur, and Thomas Middleton; only Chapman, Tourneur, and Middleton are considered seriously today, and the last is clearly the favorite. The main action is the deposition, imprisonment, and final victory of the protagonist Govianus over the Tyrant and the rivalry of the two men for the Lady. After the Lady has killed herself rather than submit to the Tyrant, the latter takes her corpse from its tomb to his chamber. The Lady’s Spirit (played by the boy actor Richard Robinson, according to a marginal note in the MS) appears to Govianus asking him to restore her body to the tomb. Govianus paints the corpse’s face with poison, and when the Tyrant kisses it, he dies. Finally the corpse is returned to the tomb attended by Govianus and the Lady’s Spirit. In the secondary action (adapted from Cervantes’ Don Quixote) Govianus’ brother Anselmus distrusts his wife and persuades his reluc­ tant friend Votarius...